an enthroned individual Emperor;
FTL and other high tech coexisting with literal slaves;
evil, green-skinned enemies of the Empire -
- and I have just described Poul Anderson's early Dominic Flandry stories.
When those stories were incorporated into a future history series, then we were shown earlier stages of the history, e.g., in The People Of The Wind:
the Empire is not yet decadent;
the Merseian Roidhunate, i.e., the green-skinned villains, is remote but growing fast;
slavery is being revived in the Empire.
Further, different installments of a single future history series can be either space opera or speculative fiction:
plausible reasons for the revival of slavery are presented;
the author invests time, effort and scientific knowledge in the creation of fictional planetary environments like that of Avalon.
The eventual end product, seven omnibus volumes collecting a series of stories and novels with a publishing history extending from 1951 to 1981, is awesome.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
Many thoughts comes to mind. I don't understand why you seem to think the Imperial form of gov't is so unlikely. Jerry Pournelle, in his article "Building THE MOTE IN GOD'S EYE," explained very plausibly how that kind of gov't might come about, even on an interstellar scale. I myself expect many different kinds of gov't to be seen, bad and good alike, once mankind finally gets off this rock.
And if non human intelligent races exist, which I personally believe is more likely to be the case than not, I fully expect some will become rivals to mankind, not just because they are different, but also because of what they may have in common with us. E.g., I would expect oxygen races to desire the same kind planets. That alone cam easily lead to rivalry and hostility.
As for slavery, in his letter to me replying to my comments about crime and punishment in the Empire, Anderson said he speculated that had its origins in the LIBERTARIAN laws of the Commonwealth. That is, it was preferred not to incarcerate criminals. Rather, a criminal could agree to work for his victim. And since most people would not want such persons around them, they could sell the contracts to brokers who would in resell the contracts to persons who could find work for them. I discussed this in more detail in my "Crime and Punishment in the Terran Empire" essay.
Sean
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